How to Implement the Best Last Mile Optimization Software

Some of the most important numbers in any last mile delivery operation come from your planned versus actual reports: How many deliveries did you complete relative to how many planned? How many miles did you drive? How profitable were your routes?

These numbers can be telling because they point directly to the gaps between what your expectations were and what the reality was on the road—two things that can be extremely different when your last mile isn’t optimized. And it’s exactly the same with software; if your software implementation is missing a few key elements, then the reality can be a far cry from what you signed up for. 

When it comes to last mile optimization, this can be a real pitfall. Too often, we’ve seen last mile optimization software deployments mired in slow processes that never get off the ground. Sometimes it’s because of unclear project requirements, tricky integrations, or simply a lackluster training and implementation plan—but in each case the result is the same. 

Luckily, the gap between your deployment plan and reality doesn’t have to be huge. With the right last mile optimization software, you can position yourself for a rapid rollout and a quick time to value.

The trick is finding the right software solution for your last mile needs, which is exactly what we’ll be helping our readers accomplish in this piece. 

5 Ways Last Mile Optimization Software Impacts Logistics Efficiency

First things first, why implement last mile optimization software? After all, change management is always going to be a challenge in a logistics organization, and you’re risking a lot of person-hours and funds any time you deploy a new solution—you need to be absolutely confident that it’s worth it. 

As it happens, logistics in general and last mile logistics in particular is an area where a little optimization can go a long way. The right software can help you increase efficiency across processes where efficiency has historically been hard to come by, which means that your potential for ROI when you deploy new software is significant. 

Here are some of the most impactful ways that the right software can improve efficiency:

1. Improved delivery capacity utilization: With AI-powered route optimization, you can decrease the number of miles your team has to drive per stop by more than 10%. Simultaneously, you can match your orders to the right equipment and driver more effectively. The combined result is significantly higher route density and improved utilization of your route capacity. Simply put, you can deliver more with the same sized fleet. 
2. Faster, smarter customer experience management: The right software will get your customer support teams off the phones and enable them to stay connected with customers via automated alerts and notifications, live two-way chat, and AI-powered issue resolution as a front line of defense. This speeds up issue resolution and gives a huge amount of time back to your team. 
3. Reduction in time spent routing and dispatching: Route optimization is notoriously complex—once you have more than a handful of parameters to deal with it becomes virtually impossible to create an efficient route by hand. Many legacy solutions are just as bad, but the right last mile optimization software will speed this process up significantly without losing out on efficiency. 
4. Improved exception management: When you have true visibility into your last mile deliveries, you can spot exceptions (like late or missed deliveries) more quickly and resolve them more effectively. This helps decrease costs associated with redelivery attempts, like extra mileage, added warehouse space, and (in the long run) increased customer acquisition costs. 
5. Elimination of manual data entry across functions: Crucially, having the right system in place here can help ensure that the right data is in the right place when it comes to your last mile systems and function and you’ve got visibility into what’s happening upstream in the supply chain (e.g. the first and middle miles). 

What to Look for in Last Mile Delivery Software

Last mile optimization software has the power to boost efficiency in the ways we’re describing, but it’s not a guarantee that any given solution on the market will give you the capabilities you need to make that level of efficiency a reality. 

Obviously, the features that you’re paying for are one (important) piece of the puzzle. You need to have effective route optimization, customer experience management, delivery tracking, documentation, driver management, and reporting, but these are table stakes for modern solutions. It’s important for this functionality to be top notch, but it’s just as important for it to be offered within a larger context of holistic logistics management capabilities.

The last mile is just one segment of a much larger whole, and true last mile optimization depends on the ability to manage the last mile within that context. Here, visibility is absolutely critical—not as a feature, but as an underlying philosophy. 

At the end of the day, the best way forward is to look for last mile delivery software that prioritizes connectivity, integration, and visibility—and a vendor whose values match up. By partnering with a last mile optimization software provider that has a track record of empowering their users with intelligent capabilities across the entire logistics journey—delighting customers and increasing efficiency along the way—you can set yourself not just for cost reduction but for a true logistics transformation. 

5 Steps to Effectively Implement the Right Last Mile Optimization Software

1. Clearly define roles, responsibilities, timelines, and phases for your software rollout. This will be a collaborative effort between you and the vendor, and they should have strong templates from past deployments that can help smooth the process out. 
2. Properly scope your use of AI tools and clearly define procedures for the handoff to a human. Right now, a lot of the most impactful AI use cases are around ensuring a quality customer experience, but that’s obviously quite a sensitive area at the same time, which makes it crucial to have intentionality and proper scoping when you deploy.  
3. Configure your routing and customer experience to your corporate brand and fleet parameters. Your customer communications need to reflect your brand just as much as your routes need to reflect your parameters if you want to succeed in providing a great experience to customers. 
4. Establish your most important metrics and KPIs. You won’t need to reinvent the wheel with these (planned vs actual can be a great place to start; total cost to serve or cost per route are also solid metrics to look at) but you will need to make sure you have the right data in the right place and that the right people can access it. 
5. Train and onboard your team—with an eye towards change management. Here, it’s important to think beforehand about whether the solution you’re proposing will be easy for the target users to actually figure out, whether we’re talking about drivers, dispatchers, or anyone else on the larger team. 

Conclusion: Last Mile Optimization Is Achievable

Getting the last mile right can be a daunting task. There’s a reason that it’s historically been the most expensive part of the supply chain, and it’s not getting any easier to manage—at least, not without the right tools. 

Luckily, last mile optimization software can go a long way towards simplifying this aspect of your logistics operations, saving you time and money in the process. The key to getting it right is finding the right software vendor and getting your last mile optimization software deployed quickly and effectively.